“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re wrong. And don’t put that shit in me. I can take the pain.” She shoved his hand away as he attempted to inject the numbing medicine.
“Funny how you sound just like Wraith, Ms. I’m Not Related to You.” Ignoring her Wraithlike string of insults, he paged a nurse, and while he waited, he prepared a suture kit and let what he’d learned sink in. Lore’s markings were identical to hers… faded, with no personal symbol. Lore was a cambion, born of a human-Seminus mating, and those went screwy a lot, so even though it was unlikely that a female could be born of that kind of mating, it might not be impossible.
The door opened, and Chu-Hua, a Guai nurse who resembled an upright wild boar, stepped in. “Yes, doctor?”
He gestured to the female. “Take a blood sample. I want DNA results compared to mine ASAP.”
The little female jerked away. “Oh, no. Stay the hell away from me.”
“You got something to hide?”
“No.”
He nodded to the nurse, but his patient hissed and backed away. He grasped her wrist. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I strongly recommend the easy way.”
Her glare drilled holes right through him. “I hate you.”
“I’m hurt.” That earned him a middle-finger salute. He held her arm while Chu-Hua started the draw. “How is the patient?” he asked the nurse, referring to the one who’d been bleeding out while doctors Pon and Rivers went at it.
“He’s being prepped for surgery,” she said, dragging out the “y” in a grating piglike squeal.
“Keep me informed.” He’d have dealt with the patient himself, but the elflike blanchier demon was one of the few species that didn’t respond well to Eidolon’s healing gift. “And make sure Rivers and Pon don’t leave my office.” On any other day, he’d have fired the doctors, but Eidolon suspected that whatever was making the rest of the staff snap was affecting the two physicians as well.
Chu-Hua left with the blood sample, leaving him alone with the female, whose glare hadn’t eased up at all.
“What’s your name?” He pinched the base of her laceration and started the first stitch.
“Ouch! Fuck. Where did you get your degree? Online?”
“I told you it was going to hurt. What’s your name?”
“Sin.”
“Short for?”
“How do you know it’s short for anything?”
Because a human wouldn’t name a child Sin. “Answer the question.”
“Sinead.”
“So… Loren and Sinead. Twins, I’m guessing?” It wasn’t a longshot of a guess; their father had been the rape ’em and leave ’em kind, and Eidolon seriously doubted he’d impregnate the same female twice. When Sin didn’t answer his question, he sighed. “The DNA test will confirm what I already know. So just admit it.”
“Yes,” she snapped. “Lore is my twin brother. You must have been at the very top of your online class.”
He ignored the barb. Tayla had broken him in to a female’s sharp tongue a long time ago. “Why hasn’t Lore mentioned you?”
She snorted. “I told him not to tell you about me.”
“Why keep it from us?”
“Why not?”
Gods, she was exasperating. She was like a female Wraith. “Are you going to answer the question?”
She sighed. “I have one pain in the ass brother already. I don’t need more, okay?” There was a defiance and a wariness in her eyes that indicated there was more to the story than what she was telling him, but now wasn’t the time to push.
Working carefully, he put the final stitches in place. “So if you didn’t want to know us, why risk coming to the hospital?”
“I told you. To find Lore.” She bit her lip, and he gave her a moment to decide if she wanted to say anything more. “He’s sort of missing.”
Yeah, Eidolon was achingly aware of that. But before he told her what he knew, he wanted as much information from her as possible. “He’s after a friend of mine. You know that, right?”
For the first time, something other than anger flickered in her expression. Fear. “What did you do to him? I swear, if you hurt him—”
“I didn’t do anything to him. Yet.”
She swallowed audibly. “It’s not Lore’s fault. He has to do it. There are severe consequences to failing a mission.”
“You sound like you know this from experience. Are you an assassin, too?”
“Another gold star for you.”
“My online degree has served me well,” he said dryly. “So who hired him?”
“Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you, nosy-ass.” She swung her legs to the opposite side of the bed and leaped down. “Now, unless you plan to tackle me again, I’m going to go find my brother.”
Eidolon blocked the door, fully intending to physically restrain her if he had to. “I just want to ask a few more questions. And maybe I can help find Lore.”
She seemed to consider that, and though she narrowed her eyes at him, she nodded slowly.
“How did you get hurt?” he asked.
“That’s none of your business.” When he cursed, she huffed. “What? It’s an answer.”
Gods, she was starting to make Wraith look agreeable. “What’s your gift?”
A plastic model of a set of lungs crashed to the floor, startling Eidolon and making Sin jump. “What the hell was that?”
“Ghost.” Damn, he was getting sick of this shit. “Your gift?” he prompted.
Glancing at the shattered model as if it was going to launch at her, she rubbed her bandage, but when she realized what she was doing, she let her hand drop. “Gift isn’t the word I’d choose for it.”
“Ability, then. What is it? You don’t wear a glove, so I’m guessing it’s not the same as Lore’s.”
She laughed bitterly. “No, but it’s still f**ked up. Apparently, only you purebreds get the cool stuff.”
“Apparently.” He waited for her to answer his question, but she didn’t, and he gnashed his teeth. “So… your ability? What is it?”
“I can cause disease at a touch.”
“Disease?” he repeated, just to make sure he heard correctly.
“D-I-S-E-A-S-E. Disease. You should have learned all about them in one of your internet classes.”
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. “What kind of disease?”
Turning away, she rubbed her injury again. “It’s different in everyone. It’s like I send a spark into someone, and the spark searches out the most horrible, personalized disease it can find to kill that individual.”
Gods, Lore and Sin couldn’t be more the opposite of Eidolon in terms of abilities. He healed; they killed. “And you do this, why?”
She rounded on him, jabbed her finger in his chest. “Don’t you judge me, asshole. You’re not exactly an angel, either. I do what I have to do. And if it makes your highly educated, superior self feel any better, I do it quickly. The werewolf was an accident.”
“What werewolf?”
She jerked. “It’s nothing. I have to go.” Sin shoved at him, but he seized her arm and hauled her up so she was on her toes, off-balance, and couldn’t possibly mistake how through with her games he was.
“The warg that came in,” he growled. “His death was your doing, wasn’t it?”
“Fuck off.”
“Sin, dammit, answer me!”
“Yes, okay?” Her black eyes glinted with flecks of gold, a Seminus trait that couldn’t be faked, and every last drop of doubt left him in a rush. “You happy now?”
“Not really,” he muttered, releasing her. Gods, his mind was still having trouble processing all of this. Lore’s existence had been unexpected, but a sister? A brother with a human mother was f**ked up enough, but Eidolon couldn’t even begin to imagine what could go wrong with a Seminus female. “I was hoping to help Lore deal with his gift… maybe I can help you with yours.”
She laughed and put a few steps between them. “Help? Yeah, okay. If you really want to help you’ll chop off the warg’s head and bring it to me in a bag. That would be a big help.”
He let out a disgusted breath. “You need proof of his death.”
“There goes the brain surgeon again.”
“You’re not getting his head,” he said tightly. “I won’t let you desecrate his body.”
“You have to!” Panic snuffed out the gold flecks in her eyes. “I need proof.”
“Or what?” When she said nothing, he repeated himself, his voice cracking in the still air. “Or what?”
“Or I’m going to be sold to Neethul slave traders.”
Eidolon inhaled sharply. As far as punishments went, it didn’t get much worse.
“Hey!” Sin jabbed him in the biceps. “You stroking out or something? You’re pale. And you’re not being all superior. Something’s wrong.”
Oh, she was a riot. “Will anything other than his head be acceptable?”
“Sometimes a unique identifying feature will work, but you need a damned good reason for not having the head.”
“Would your employer accept my word as a Justice Dealer and physician?” Granted, he was no longer an enforcer of demon law, but he had powerful connections and a f**king great game face.
She leveled a look of disbelief at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I can make it look official. I’ll include an autopsy report and a photo.”
“I guess that’s not a horrible idea.” She slid him a puppy-dog look with a side of pout and batting eyelashes that must come standard on every sister, because Omira, the Judicia sister he’d grown up with, used to try the same thing. “You sure I can’t have his head? Pretty please? It’s not like he needs it.”
“I’m sure. Come back tomorrow for the report.” He paused. “About Lore…”
Sin froze as she reached for the door handle. “What?”
He told her about Lore and Idess, and everything that had gone down, though he left out the details about Kynan’s Sentinel status.
“So this chick is protecting Kynan? Why?”
“I don’t know,” he lied.
Sin erupted with a creative flow of curses, and when she was finished, she asked, “What does she look like?” Sin asked.
“Like she’d look good on a mattress.”
Sin jammed her fists on her hips. “That tells me nothing, and aren’t you mated?”
“I’m also a male sex demon. I didn’t go blind when I took a mate.” He had, however, lost all desire to so much as touch another female. He only wanted Tayla. Wanted her constantly, and even now heat began to kindle at the mere thought of her. “Long, dark brown hair she keeps in a ponytail, light brown eyes. Tall. Right ear is pierced at the top.”
“That bitch.” Sin’s voice went low and deadly, her body coiled like a predator about to strike, and he suddenly saw the assassin she was. “She attacked me, too. And she had Lore’s Gargantua-bone dagger. I got it back.”
Eidolon blinked at that. Those daggers were rarer than acid sprite mana and just as priceless. “Did it taste her blood?”
Sin’s grin was downright evil. “Yes. Come 3:00 A.M., I’m hunting.”
Eidolon had no doubt Sin would find Idess. He hadn’t known his… sister… for long, but already he knew she’d inherited their family’s single-minded determination. And stubbornness. “Sin, you can’t kill the female when you find her.”
“Oh, I plan to kill her. Like, a lot. After she tells me what she’s done with Lore.”
“She’s an angel. You’ll only get yourself killed.”
“You might be surprised. But what happens when I do find Lore?” she asked quietly. “He’s after your friend. You just going to stand by and let Lore have him? Or will I be rescuing him just so his own brothers can kill him?”
“Nothing is going to happen to him,” Eidolon said, but he doubted she believed him, because he didn’t believe it either.
* * *
Warmth surrounded Idess like a blanket. A heady, masculine spice tickled her nose. Wriggling, she burrowed closer to the scent and warmth. After all the years of loneliness and feeling as if she didn’t belong—or deserve to belong anywhere—she finally felt at peace. She must be dreaming… except, she didn’t dream. She had nightmares. Not that she was going to complain. She was going to enjoy this wonderful feeling while she could.
“Idess?” The husky voice floated down to her. “Angel?”
“Mmm.”
“I gotta take a leak.”
She jerked upright, blinking, trying to focus her eyes and her brain. It took several seconds to recognize her bedroom, her bed… her demon that was chained to said bed.
Stunned by the realization that she’d fallen asleep on him, she muttered into her palm, “Oh, I’m… sorry. Are you okay?” Her weight had to have put extra pressure on his shoulders and arms.
“Yeah.” His voice was gruff. Maybe he’d fallen asleep, too. A sudden tenderness in her groin nixed the sleep theory, as arousal pulsed into her through their blood connection. Grr. She knew it had been a mistake to feed from him. “I just gotta take a piss.”